Don't Party Like It's 1974

November 7, 2008

Notable quotable from Rahm in the Timesstory today about Obama's budding economic team:

Mr. Obama is coordinating with Congressional Democrats behind the scenes on the stimulus plans, which would include more jobless benefits, food stamps, aid to financially strapped states and cities, and spending for infrastructure projects that keep people at work. His chief liaison has been Mr. Emanuel.

"You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid," Mr. Emanuel said in an interview. "In 1974 and 1978 we never dealt with it, and our dependence on foreign oil never changed."

Well said. Piling on, Kate Sheppard reports that Nancy Pelosi also plans to give the inevitable stimulus bill a greenish hue: "Central to the job-creation issue is the strong piece for rebuilding
the infrastructure of America, again, in a way that reduces our
dependence on foreign oil and that creates good green jobs in America," she said at a press conference Wednesday. (See the Center for American Progress's "Green Recovery" plan for a rough sketch of what an eco-focused stimulus package might look like.)

Mr. Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion over the next ten years in clean energy. That is not enough, Mr. Gore said.

The nation needs to build “an electronet,” a unified national smart
grid, with high-voltage, low-loss underground wires that deliver
renewable energy from the places that produce it — like the sunny
Arizona deserts or the windy Dakota plains — to the cities where the
majority of it is used. Such a grid would require a $400 billion
investment upfront, but would pay off in just over three years, he
said, because the nation spends $120 billion annually on costs from
power outages blamed on the existing grid.